I like structure. And that’s what I expect whenever I visit a SaaS website. I want to get a sense of the software structure right away. If not, I feel quite overwhelmed.

And I’m sure leads and prospective users feel the same. It’s a bit of a torture to navigate a SaaS website that presents software in a disorganized way.

Here are some almost nightmarish examples:

Disjointed features

In some cases, SaaS companies present their software as a cluster of features. And they all feel disconnected. There’s no core module or guiding narrative to unify them. And users are just left wondering how these features relate to each other.

Feature repetition

Imagine users clicking through different ‘product’ pages, only to find that each one lists the same features.

Overlapping features with different names

A ‘Collaboration’ feature on one page and a ‘Teamwork’ feature on another sound familiar. But as they appear under different ‘product’ pages, users must guess whether they’re the same.

Multiple version of the same platform

Imagine users encountering “Platform X Lite” and “Platform X Advanced.” And each 'platform' is vaguely overlapping descriptions and features. Worse, they can’t tell which version they need or if any specific feature is exclusive to one version.

… the horror list continues …

This lack of structure comes with consequences. Here are some of them:

• It’s harder for people to understand how the software works as a cohesive whole.
• They may become frustrated and lose interest in exploring the software.
• People may automatically perceive the software as being unreliable.
• Finally, leads may leave the website without taking any action.

After all, who wants to go through the torture of making sense of a complex platform?

Messaging is built on structure. If you don’t have a structure, it doesn’t matter how good your copy is. People will struggle to figure things out.

To keep this from happening, you can structure your software based on its modules, features, sub-features, and actions.

Let’s take them one by one:

• Modules: Top-level containers representing major capabilities. For example, ‘Team Collaboration’ can be a major module within a Project Management Platform.
• Features: Major functional areas within modules. For example, ‘Async Communication’ can be a feature within the ‘Team Collaboration’ module.
• Sub-features: Secondary functional elements. For example, the 'Async Communication' may contain sub-features such as ‘Comment,’ ‘Mention,’ and ‘Reaction.’
• Actions: Operations or tasks that users perform within the features and / or sub-features. For example, add comment, edit comment, delete comment, or mention team member.

This simple way of structuring a platform can help organize the messaging, creating a coherent narrative. As a result, people will find it easy to discover the platform.

They will understand how capabilities and features relate to each other. Finally, this will give them a zoomed-out perspective about the software and make them feel more confident about navigating it.